Agh, it's been so long since weve had a true combo deck in standard. We all remember the days of twin decks(and caw blade), combining out on t4. This isn't as rediculous, it takes longer to assemble the combo, and doesn't fold to removal. However, the cost is having to answer most cards your opponent plays. To lead into the hard lock combo, Knowledge Pool and Curse of Exhaustion.
We have to play control to keep in the game, so uw control seemed like a good choice. However, being me, I couldn't stay away from black because of the good days with my pool deck casting emrakul(with Liliana Vess. So I ended up splashing black for a Vault of the Archangel and 2 Nephalia Drownyards.
The deck breaks down as follows:
Combo pieces: Knowledge Pool and Curse of Exhaustion, fairly self explanatory, you cant Cast spells from your hand.
Control: a suite of counters including 4 Mana Leaks, 2 Dissipate, and Negate. Along with this we have 3 Day of Judgments to sweep boards.
Pristine Talisman
is a control card, it ramps and stabilizes your life total. Very helpful..
The engine: 4 Ponders and 4 Forbidden Alchemys find the combo, or that missing piece.
Treasure Mage
provides some card advantage and consistancy.
Alternative win conditions: Elspeth Tirel and
Gideon Jura
are our backup strategy if we can't stop Memoricide(games have been decided over one of these resolving). For the longer games, or if the opponent is a jerk and doesn't concede after the combo lands, we can mill them out with dual Nephalia Drownyards. There is also a singleton Wurmcoil Engine as an additional threat to be fetched by
Treasure Mage
Final thoughts: I commonly find myself with both Knowledge Pools in my hand, this allows you to play into a counter and make your opponent feel safe. I added Surgical Extraction to take care of control's counters, or wolf runs titans/
Inkmoth Nexus
.
If you have any questions about knowledge pool, please feel free to ask here or on my wall. If Knowledge Pool has you intrigued, mafteechr has an article: mafteechr's classroom: Knowledge Pool.And don't forget to +1 the deck if you like it, or comment why you don't.
